Thread: car won't start

My car won't start. It seems like my battery is totally drained, because my lights don't turn on. I called AAA and had them come out to give me a jump, and when the mechanic attached his battery booster to my battery, the negative battery terminal started to arch. So we disconnected the battery boosted. We then tested the battery with a voltmeter, and the battery was at like .01 volts. So we then disconnected the wires from the terminal, and then tested the battery with the voltmeter and it showed 8volts. We reconnected the positive wires to the battery, and the voltmeter showed 8volts. When we reconnected the negative wire to the battery, the voltage on the voltmeter dropped from 8volts down to .01volts.

It seems like something is drawing power of the battery, but what could it be. Does anyone have any suggestions?

check your ground from your battery to the thermosta.

the ground is connected to the engine, there are a couple of frayed wires, but most of them are intact. Any other suggestions?

You have some sort of parasitic draw, Z. Do you have an alarm? Sometimes the hood switches on alarms cause that. Or possibly something to do with the stereo. But really, what it seems like is you have a short somewhere. Time to start chasing wires...

I f*cking HATE electrical problems.

The car doesnt have an alarm, it still has the stock alarm...I guess I need to buy an voltmeter, and start pulling out fuses

Damn...

just a couple more ideas (this is the b14?)

any way you can get the alternator tested?
any way you got an extra battery?

reground the battery too, run a new power wire from the alternator to the battery too

keep in mind my amp was doin that. Also u wired in a MAF so recheck it

Yup, look for wires that might be frayed, or touching other leads... But yeah, like you said, time to start checking everything.

Good luck Z!

This just doesnt make any sense. The car was running "fine" until Tues. I didn't touch anything or change anything, so what would suddenly cause the problem?

This is fustrating as hell because it's my only car and because I put all these parts on it and I still havent been able to drive it...wtf